Reason number 601,321 that we can’t wait for football season to start…. the highlight of the weekend TV watching involved this:

We did promise gratuitous photos to make you forget our guest bloggers! Thank you Miss Universe.

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Mmm…in the food groups of content, race-baiting columns have got to be up there with circus peanuts for nutritional content. Terence Moore of the AJC’s made a living off selling them, especially to outraged and oddly attentive Georgia fans (see any column involving David Greene and D.J. Shockley for an example.) Our favorite Moore columns include “Why Hasn’t the Kentucky Derby Had a Black Champion?”, “The Hidden Racism of Sumo Wrestling,” and “Peyton Manning is a Teeny-Weenied Cracker Who Couldn’t Hold Mike Vick’s Tremendous Jock.”
Mike Freeman of CBS Sportsline could be accused of taking the same route with his latest piece on Chris Leak and his evolving, ambiguous reputation among Florida fans by quoting a whole lot of anecdotal evidence in his piece accusing Florida fans of letting race dictate their attitudes regarding the former blue-chipper and standard bearer for all that has gone right and wrong with Florida football over the past four years. That is, if he didn’t have a few quotes from Curtis Leak, CL’s father:

“I think the Gator Nation as a whole is behind Chris, but there are some fans who are not. They will never support him because of his skin color.

I also can’t help but think it is difficult for Chris to be a black quarterback in the SEC. You have to be blind to see that is still tough for blacks in general in that conference. The fact you have had only one black head coach in the history of the SEC, which has been around for 100 years, says a lot.”

We honestly can’t think of any fanbase this couldn’t be said of, since there are fans who root for people based on the number of consonants in their nickname. (And they dig players of Slavic descent like you wouldn’t believe.) Doesn’t seem too outrageous a statement to make, though, especially when Leak does play in the SEC, which has a nastier past in the department of race relations than anyone would care to admit.
Yet building a whole column around the idea that Leak is unfairly slammed on message boards (who isn’t?) because he’s black seems forced, especially to someone who’s watched Leak bear the brunt of the blame for the tumult of post-Spurrier Gatordom. Freeman essentially welded together the wacko email he’d get in response to columns with hearsay, a few talk radio calls he half-remembers, and a few mild quotes from Curtis Leak into an indictment of a sliver of the fanbase most fans would agree should be shot from cannons rather than granted access to the stadium. It’s a formula you could install neatly into almost any story involving a black quarterback in any setting:

“I remember when I’d write columns and people would respond with hateful letters calling me a (insert ethnic slur/gag about facial deformity/mocking joke about public and painful divorce.) It always rang true for me because (I worked there/knew a guy/read a book about the place and man, it sounded fucked up.) I’ve heard people say things in the stands to the same effect. (For best results, repeat until satisfied.)”

The funniest thing about the column is how wrong Freeman is about the basic tenet of the article: that a small group of Florida fans hate Chris Leak because he’s black. This couldn’t be further from the truth: a small group of Florida fans hate Chris Leak because he’s Jewish, something Freeman could have known simply by looking at the Swoosh-bedazzled Nike athletic yarmulke Leak wears between plays on the sideline. Holy unobservant journalism!

That’s not the guy Freeman’s talking about-surprise!!!

Lamar Owens Jr., former Navy quarterback on trial for raping a female student, was acquitted on Friday. Owens was convicted of the lesser charge of conduct unbecoming an officer (which itself could have carried a two year sentence) but the military jury recommended no punishment.

We’re back from the Redneck Riviera, where we sat on a beach reading the Bourne series by Robert Ludlum and wearing out our IPod while growing some fine tumors in the sun. When they start demanding their own beer…that’s bad, right?

We did see the following:

-A fishing boat worth no more than 750 dollars painted poop brown with a ferocious face painted on the bow and the words “WAR MACKERAL” emblazoned on each side in huge red letters.(Misspelling observed and intentional; that’s the way the guy spelled it.) Bama fans, take note: you have your new mocking name for the Barners in hand.

-A bar band at AJ’s in Destin boasting a 75% jean short compliance rate as well as an impressive 75% mustache/mullet ratio. Despite the temp being somewhere around ninety degrees, they all wore shoes that required socks and worked through a playlist that…well, involved a lot of songs about drinking and sunshine. They’ll be playing the EDSBS tailgate, of course, provided the keyboard guy can get the house arrest anklet off in time for it.

-A sunburned Alabama fan in a white Panama hat-evidently, he looked at the old Panama Jack logo when packing for wardrobe guidance-who blew our minds when he got up for karaoke and bypassed the exit ramps of “Sweet Home Alabama” and “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” to sing…”Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground. He rocked it, too.

-A very attractive blond woman with a dress painted on shaking her ass at 331 much to the disappointment of her beer-bloated husband, who kept trying to intervene in between daring anyone around him to look at her and die. This went on for about an hour of spectacular viewing before the husband shifted into “potential abuser” mode and escorted her out of the club, presumably to get “first husband” tattooed on his forehead. Free entertainment abounded on the Redneck Riviera.

-It’s good to be back. Month and change to footbaw, goddamn. A huge round of thanks to Paul, Peter, SMQ, and Stranko for keeping the wire warm the whole time with quality content, even if Paul did post pictures of Lindsay Scott to properly play the part of Dawg Heel. [NAME REDACTED] still has your ass if you want it back anytime soon, which is about as bad a thing as we can think to say about any team. Good to be back.

2-1 versus the Dawgs. Redact that.

Willie Cooper, a junior safety for the Miami Hurricanes, was shot this morning. His prognosis is good as the bullet hit him in the ass. The investigation is ongoing, but, according to the local CBS affiliate:

at around 6:45 a.m. they spotted a suspicious car pull up in front of their home. A masked gunman got out and started shooting. [Brandon] Meriwether and Cooper walked to the corner of the residence where they saw one black male crotched down next to their home.

According to police, Meriweather yelled at the black male at which time the male jumped up and shot one time hitting Cooper in the buttocks. When Cooper was shot its believed Meriweather pulled a pistol from his pants pocket and fired three times at the assailant, who jumped a fence and fled with another person in an older model blue Audi, police said.

This might inspire a new ending to the next Michael Mann movie.

Miami’s new offensive line coach.

When Orson asked me to co-host EDSBS this week, I thought….”Hmmm…posting on a Gator Blog. This should be interesting.” Some worried that I would use the opportunity to run down Urban Meyer or talk smack about the Gator Program. Not me. No I prefer to take the high road when it comes to such matters.
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Run Lindsay Run
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I’m not the kind of guy that would come on here and take advantage of my host’s offer of carte blanche posting to bring up painful memories of Gator moments in the past….like the seal clubbing in the Fiesta Bowl. No, I’m bigger than that. I wouldn’t stoop to that level.
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He’s still running.
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That’s what they’ve always said. Ol’ High Road Westerdawg. Anyway, thanks to Orson for the invite. Next time I’m on vacation, I’m leaving him the keys to One Georgia Sports Blog Tower, and he can pull double duty for me. Seems only fair. Note to Orson, I left your keys to the IROC on your office desk….and the jorts you sent me to wear while posting didn’t fit. Until then I leave you with the Head Ball Coach’s greatest soundbite ever. — Paul Westerdawg (bring on the 2-14 jokes)

What a great week it has been here on EDSBS thanks entirely to our guest bloggers, Peter from BON, Paul from Georgia Sports, and SMQ . Why did we ask them to fill in in Orson’s absense….we’ll that is obvious. As you can now see, they can write their asses off. So, if you weren’t a regular reader of theirs before, make sure you are one now.

Now for the hard part. How does EDSBS top this week of guest blogging? Well, we start with the demise of Orson’s luxurious red neck riviera vacation. And then… it is topless women, shirtless football players (for the other half of our audience), free booze, instant acting Viagra and Cialis for all, free downloads of Paris Hilton’s hit new single and …

Could EDSBS turn into a Girls Gone Wild Party?

…or perhaps just some more snarks and quips about the world of college football fandome, with some fart jokes and pop culture thrown in for good measure. But anyway, a heartfelt thanks to our guest bloggers. We just hope they haven’t upped the meager expectations of our readers.

At the beginning of the month, we took a look at what correlation, if any, exists between an AP national title winning football team and its final AP Poll ranking the year before. I said at that time that I wanted to dig up the data for the AP Preseason polls to look at where the eventual national champions were ranked in the preseason of their title-winning year.

Thanks to College Football Resource, whom I owe a giant tip of the hat, we have that data. Let’s have a look:

¹AP National Champions

For one thing, we can see that the AP voters struggled from 1980-1984. Before we get into further analysis, let me bring you up to speed on what happened in in that five year span:

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It is our last “oldie but goodie” for a while, I promise, but I figured EDSBS needed its daily whiff of Orson even when on vacation. So relax and enjoy. Afterall, it’s Friday!

Coaches are often accused of being dictators. We decided that some of them might actually be real-life dictators. For more compelling evidence, please click on the more button to see some of our disturbing picks.

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Attention Gatorfans! Time to start getting hyped and in gear again. In order to assist you in that, UF has this nice piece of propaganda to watch as in introduction to Urban Meyer’s website.